


until then (listen for her song)

by thatiranianphantom



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: But like a poetic one, Every single bit of the angst, F/M, God I'm aging myself, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, In which Jughead is kind of Ryan from The OC you feel?, It just kinda poked around inside my mind, It's good I promise, Jughead introspection, Just it's an angst fest okay, hopefully, please heed warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24801007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatiranianphantom/pseuds/thatiranianphantom
Summary: His breath comes in fast pants that have nothing to do with the chill in the air. He doesn’t understand it, but he does not allow himself to think of anything but when he will see her next.Soon. Soon, he’ll hear her laugh. God, he loves her laugh.After an accident, Jughead learns to survive.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 22
Kudos: 66
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	until then (listen for her song)

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like there are people you can blame for this, and those people are not me. Maybe. Possibly. 
> 
> But basically, I return to my angst wheelhouse in this, and write 4000 words of sorrow. 
> 
> Please heed the warnings, this contains major character death, and some VERY unhealthy coping mechanisms. But as we know this won't happen in the show, let's indulge ourselves a bit before going back to the land of happy endings.

_ "To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget." _

  * Arundhati Roy, _The Cost of Living_



* * *

_ I just want you to know, I love you. I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll see you soon.  _

They call him, and he hears that phone ringing for the rest of his life. It’s a marked difference of time. The before and after. Before the phone rang, where he was Jughead, of Betty and Jughead. 

But that was before. Before someone extinguished her light for want of a $10 cab ride. Before love, in its very concept, was blown from the universe. Before the night descended. 

* * *

They say the driver was drunk. Blood alcohol of 0.13, that’s what they said. It means he was drunk. Stupid drunk, and it’s a fitting metaphor because he got behind the wheel of a car. He could barely see straight, but apparently felt confident enough to operate 2000 pounds of metal. 

They said they were taking care of it. They’d arrested him, but he’d made bail. He had a family, they said. 

Jughead had a family too. That family was Betty, who wasn’t even driving. 

Who was just walking down the sidewalk. 

Who didn’t even see it coming. 

* * *

He rode his motorbike to the hospital. 

  
  


They hadn’t told him anything. 

  
  


His breath comes in fast pants that have nothing to do with the chill in the air. He doesn’t understand it, but he does not allow himself to think of anything but when he will see her next.

Soon. Soon, he’ll hear her laugh. God, he loves her laugh. 

_ I just want you to know I love you.  _

* * *

He’s pretty sure everyone else was there. 

Maybe they tried to hug him, he’s not sure. It’s not like it mattered. 

* * *

Betty smells like strawberries. She always had. 

It’s a smell associated with other things now. 

It’s warmth. It’s safety, it’s the whole future. 

(It’s a laugh, looking back.) 

* * *

_ Wednesday night date night becomes a staple, from the first day she drags him into a theatre so dingy that his feet stick to the ground.  _

_ They’re playing Rebel Without a Cause, it’s half price every Wednesday, and the theatre is empty.  _

_ He looks at her, and she looks down shyly.  _

_ “We never got to have that movie date at the Twilight,” she mumbles. “I thought we might correct that.”  _

_ She’s shy and adorable, and he can’t help but kiss her.  _

_ They eat too much candy, make out like the teens they are, and go back next week. _

_ And then the week after, and the week after that, until the weeks meld into years. _

_ It feels like full circle when they squeeze themselves into the familiar, worn seats, and the silence is broken, not by a film reel, but by a tiny cry. _

_ They soothe the baby in the Moby wrap against Jughead’s chest, as the first frames flicker onto the screen. _

_ “You are about to see something incredible,” he whispers to his daughter.  _

* * *

The doctor’s scrubs are clean. 

Maybe she’s alive. 

  
  


(She’s not.) 

* * *

He always thought it would happen when they were old men and women. It was a cliche, but that’s how he pictured it, if he did. Hands wizened, he’s bald, liver spots mark their skin. Her skin sags and she’s beautiful. 

They’re ninety-three. It was a good life. Filled with laughter, mysteries, children, grandchildren. 

They’d get married at twenty. People would tell them they’re crazy, of course they would. But when they were old and grey, people would say, seventy years, and they still loved each other. 

She’d smile softly at him, one last time, the bed packed with children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. So much love. She’d go first, but only barely. He’s not sick, but he goes next, and nobody is surprised. 

It’s peaceful. 

It’s the last bit of peace he’s allowed, because reality is harsh, and violent. 

_ (I’ll never stop loving you.)  _

* * *

In the world of reality, the doctor’s face is imprinted onto his brain, and that will never change. 

They did everything they could. 

Everything they could. 

* * *

They all cry. Right away, they cry. 

They just accept it. They see the doctor, they hear his words, and they just  _ believe _ it. 

They scream, and they wail, and they give up, they give her up.

They let her be dead. 

* * *

It’s a lie, it’s a cop out, it’s a platitude. 

He’s lying, he’s  _ lying _ to them. 

So he pins the doctor against the wall and he demands to see her.

She’s alive, he knows it. 

He would  _ feel _ it if she was gone. He would know. He would, they’re connected. There’s an invisible tether that connects them, there has been since they were five years old. And if it was severed, he would  _ know _ . 

Evidently, his feet move, because they take him down a hallway, and his arms shove people out of the way. 

She’s in the ER. 

_ She never made it to the operating room _ , the doctor’s voice spins in his head. 

He fists a hand to his head. 

It’s not  _ true _ . 

She’s here. When he pushes open the doors of the trauma room, she’ll be sitting up. She’ll smile at him, she’ll hug him, he’ll breathe out against her, he’ll feel her warm against him, she’ll giggle and everything will be fine. 

He’ll brush his fingers along her face, bruised but beautiful, and she’ll tell him “I’m okay, Juggie.” 

It’ll be fine.

_ I just want you to know, I love you. _

* * *

They try to hold him back. They try, because there’s blood on the floor, and blood on their scrubs. 

And the monitor features a blank screen. 

And she’s not moving, and she’s pale and grey. 

* * *

  
  


He shakes her, but she doesn’t wake up. 

He calls her name, but she doesn’t stir.

He holds her to him but she doesn’t move. 

* * *

It’s instantaneous. 

It’s something that happens in a moment, as he’s holding her against him. As he’s feeling how cold and limp she is, and he’s desperately trying to press his body heat into her so she’ll wake up,  _ wake up _ .

It happens as he’s screaming her name, as sobs wrack his body, as he (they, the last time they’ll ever be a they) convulses so hard he nearly falls. 

The tether snaps. 

It snaps, and the color is sucked from the universe, in one single instant. 

* * *

  
  


His father pulls him away. Jughead punches him. 

He misses, but it’s only the beginning. 

He hates his father, he hates every single person in this room who is keeping his Betty from him, who is letting her be dead. 

It’s something that carries him through the next few months. 

He hates his father.

He hates Alice.

And he even hates Betty, for leaving him. 

* * *

_ They elope, in a way.  _

_ They aren’t alone, but there’s no more than ten people around them, and it’s outside.  _

_ They find an apple tree orchard, just now in bloom, and they can’t say no.  _

_ It’s not legal, not technically, but they don’t care.  _

_ They haven’t prepared vows, she simply tells him what he means to her, and he responds in kind.  _

_ He cries and doesn’t care, because she’s smiling at him. _

_ Someone brings a stereo that plays soft music, and they dance until after anyone is gone, long into the night.  _

* * *

There’s so many people crying around him.

He knows it, because he hears it sometimes. 

The walls of their room press down on him. She’s everywhere, but he can’t leave, because then she’ll be gone.

Jellybean cries when she forces him to drink. 

His father cries when they force him into the shower.

Alice cries all the time, everywhere. 

Charles takes care of everyone and he goes out to the backyard to cry.

Jughead thinks he cries. For the first few days, up until the funeral, as he delivers her eulogy, maybe he cries. 

* * *

He does, he thinks. Because he can’t finish the eulogy. 

He knows why they asked him. The writer, the orator, the future author. 

The words he does manage to come up with are small, and pitiful, and he can’t even finish them. 

The sobs shake him, obscure his tiny, pathetic words, until Archie Andrews clasps him in strong arms. He allows it, he allows himself to break. He allows Archie to speak his words.

And people around him cry, as he does. 

* * *

But after the funeral, does he cry? 

Maybe it’s all he does, because his face feels raw and stiff, so most probably, he’s crying. 

But it’s hard to tell with his heart disconnected from his body. 

_ I just want you to know, I love you. I’ll never stop loving you _ . 

* * *

He just wants to stop. 

He wants the world to stop, he wants to get off. He doesn’t ponder the implications of that, and it’s a good thing, because he hasn’t left this room in a week, and he is marionetted around the necessities of life. 

It feels almost laughable to call them necessities. 

There’s a stone in his chest, constant wetness on his cheeks, and his heart is absent but every other part of his body feels. 

Everything else aches and drags, and there is no solace. The lights are too bright, the smells and sights too sharp and harsh.

And it's his forever, because he’s alive. 

That feels more like a curse than anything else. 

He’s alive. 

Betty’s not, but he lives. 

Maybe it’s exactly the punishment he deserves. 

* * *

Henry Harper. 

The name is slipped to him, he’s apparently not to reveal a source.

(It was Hiram Lodge, sporting an uncharacteristic softness in his eyes.) 

* * *

He considers a gun.

But this man mowed his life down on a street corner, as if it was nothing.

As if she meant nothing. 

So, no. A gun is not painful enough, not nearly.

His Serpent knife is rusty, and that’s even better. 

* * *

  
  


It fills him, sustains him, this thirst for revenge. 

He owes this man pain. He’ll make him pay. 

He destroyed Jughead’s world in the blink of an eye. Nothing will ever be enough, in so many ways. But he owes this man pain, and pain he will get. 

That is his legacy to Betty. 

* * *

  
  


He finally gets to Henry Harper, and the man is on his floor. There’s a bullet in his head, but Jughead hates it. That’s a bullet he didn’t put there.

Henry Harper is already dead, and he wants to wake him up, just so he can kill him again. 

But if he ever had any control over life and death, he knows he would not use it for this.

* * *

So there’s no revenge. There’s no justice. Betty can just be gone, and that’s the end. 

It stirs an anger in him, anger in its purest form. 

The first punch barely registers on the man’s limp body, and it doesn’t satisfy him. 

Neither does the next one, or the next, or any of the succeeding ones until the man’s body is a mess of blood and broken bones, and Charles pulls him away. 

He shouts something, but Jughead doesn’t hear him. 

What does it even matter now? 

But the anger. The anger that courses through him, for once, it makes him feel something. It makes him feel other than dead. 

Charles yanks his brother’s body into him, maybe to offer comfort. It’s cold, because the anger is more comfort than Jughead has felt in weeks.

It makes him feel alive. 

He feels the pain in his knuckles. He  _ feels _ it. 

  
He sees the blood, and he remembers her blood, and that legacy is better. 

* * *

  
  


_ They fight because their daughter punched a boy.  _

_ They’re called into the principal’s office, and Betty is Alice Cooper incarnate, punctuating the conversation with a “yes, I understand”, or an apology every now and then.  _

_ They call the boy in, and Betty assures the principal that they will talk to their daughter. _

_ Jughead leans into her as they leave and whispers, “Did you win?” _

_ The boy was pushing her, they learn. Teasing her. He’s relentless. He spilled paint in their baby’s lap, because he could. She had never told them, trying to be brave, like they had told her.  _

_ Betty waits until the door closes in their room that night to burst into tears.  _

_ The boy’s parents are donors to the school. They’ll never believe their daughter. This injustice is one that she had to suffer alone.  _

_ They think of every possible reason they can to not send their baby to school that next day, but she insists. She’ll face this. She’s brave, the strongest person he knows. Just like her mom.  _

_ The call comes just after lunch that day. The boy trembles in the corner. Their daughter has a split lip, but she looks victorious.  _

_ She’d stopped one punch short of a straight knockout, they learn. After the abuse she was made to take, she hadn’t lowered herself to his level.  _

_ He’s ridiculously proud, they both are, but still, as they leave the office that day, he leans down to her ear.  _

_ “For next time, when you have a guy on the mat,” he whispers. “You finish him off.”  _

_ They get ice cream as a family, and his baby wears the split lip with pride.  _

* * *

It’s so ludicrously easy to find a fight club near him. 

He wins sometimes, and sometimes he loses. 

He breaks his nose, two fingers, cracks three ribs, and he loves it. 

It's a pain he can source. It’s a pain he can comprehend. He relishes it, lives for it. 

* * *

His family gasps in horror when he comes home bloodied and bruised. Charles tries to follow him, his father tries to keep him from going back. 

So he makes a deal with the ringleader and he moves into the apartment above the boxing ring.

It smells, and it has rats, and it’s the farthest cry from a cozy room and a warm body in bed next to him.

But that’s best, because he needs to remind himself that decades stretch out in front of him, and they’ll be spent alone.

A cold, rat infested room seems as good a place to start as any. 

_ (I’ll never stop loving you.) _

* * *

They try to stop him. They all do. 

One day, Jellybean comes to see him, begs him to stop. He’s scaring her, he knows. 

His tough, brave sister, who has already been through so much. Her blue eyes blink up at him as he strokes her soft cheek.

It’s hurting her so much to see him like this. 

He’s forgotten what that kind of hurt feels like. 

But he can’t stop. 

* * *

He breaks more bones.

His skin bruises, and once, they call an ambulance. 

He wakes in a trauma room, and it’s as if he never left. 

(He didn’t. The biggest part of him never left there.) 

He refuses treatment and punches two doctors. 

They steal medical supplies and never call the ambulance again.

* * *

  
  


His father visits once. 

He breathes a “Jesus, boy,” and tries to touch Jughead’s face. 

Jughead pulls away, in all ways, and in especially the way of refusing to come home. 

He’s scaring his father too, he knows. He’s jealous, in a way. That’s an emotion he’d love to feel.

His father leaves, back into Riverdale. Back into the life Jughead left. 

That life doesn’t exist anymore, not for him. If anything, his father’s visit only serves to remind him that this is the way it is, and will always be. 

* * *

Time is a vast nothing, stretching out in front of him. 

He’s not sure how long it’s been. Maybe a few months? 

He steps into the shower one day and can feel every one of his ribs. Only then does it occur to him that he hasn’t eaten in two days. He eats so he won’t pass out at the fight that night, and washes it down with beer. It burns, and maybe, in another life, he’d feel shame. He’d feel like he’s following his family legacy, something he always tried to avoid, 

Then again, in another life, there would be a soft hand stroking down his face, a gentle voice telling him  _ it’s alright, Juggie _ , a warm bed to go home to. 

That’s not this life. It was, but it won’t ever be again. 

And with that thought ricocheting around his mind, he orders another beer. 

* * *

When he left Elm Street, he took his weathered backpack, and his motorcycle. That was it. That was all he needed.

The motorcycle is well-used. 

He still uses his off days to drive. Just drive, no destination in mind, just leave. 

On one day, he drives to the nearby hills. The bike sputters as it goes up, up, up, but it doesn’t stop. 

He sits on top of a craggy cliff, his legs hanging over the edge, and the wind whips around him. It’s dangerous, and he knows it, but it’s warm. The wind sings through the trees around him, and the tiniest shred of hope he still possesses hears a laugh on it. 

It’s her laugh. 

He closes his eyes, and rests. 

_ (I’ll see you soon.) _

* * *

It’s hours later that he leaves, but he has a fight. 

He’s angry at having to leave. He’s angry at everything. 

Maybe sitting on the cliff felt like a different world. Everything was softer, gentler. It was closer to her than he’d been in months. 

But this, this is real life. And it’s every day, everywhere. For the rest of his life.

He lets his opponent pound him into the mat and he doesn’t even feel it. 

* * *

There’s a girl, a bartender. Sometimes he thinks she looks like Toni. He halfway expects the name to trigger nostalgia, a longing for home.

But there is no home now, and he feels nothing. 

The girl slides him drinks sometimes. She smiles sympathetically at him. On occasion, she tosses him a rag to clean the blood off his face. 

Then one day, she kisses him.

She presses her lips to his, and Jughead, out of something he desperately clings to as pure instinct, meets her lips.

It’s not a good kiss. In point of fact, it’s barely a kiss, but he stutters away, giving the girl a harder shove than he perhaps meant to. 

All the nothingness in his head switches gears, until it ramps up, like having the volume turned up. It’s loud, and brutal, and he let her kiss him. 

He has a shift but he doesn’t care. 

He can barely see his motorcycle as he revs the engine but it doesn’t matter. 

The road blurs under him as he drives to the mountains but nothing changes, and nothing ever will. 

* * *

_ It’s coming close to his deadline for his third book, and Betty is up to her eyeballs in a case. They’ve barely seen each other in weeks, two ships passing in the morning. He’s proud of her, one of the FBI’s youngest recruits. They’ve just moved into a new house, his reviews have been coming in strong, and a few movie deals are being tossed around. _

_ It’s a good time, but he’d like just a moment away from his computer.  _

_ Deadlines bow to nobody, though. Not even the developing carpal tunnel in his wrists.  _

_ Price to pay for being a workaholic married to another workaholic, he supposed.  _

_ Which is why it’s particularly shocking when the front door opens. Not two minutes later, two arms wrap around him and he feels warm lips on his neck.  _

_ He smiles, but he has a deadline.  _

_ There’s an odd look in her eyes, as she shakes her head and tells him she has a gift for him.  _

_ They’re not particularly materialistic, but it’s fine, because she unbuttons her top and it’s all pink lace, and suddenly he’s tossing her on the bed.  _

_ “Juggie, the deadline,” she giggles.  _

_ “Fuck the deadline,” he growls, and loses himself in her gasps and giggles. _

_ It can’t get better than this, he thinks. _

_ But it can, because his angel pulls out a white stick from their bedside table, one with a pink plus sign, and his life shifts.  _

* * *

He throws himself at the base of the cliff, and the sobs rip out of him, violent and earth-shaking. Like they were when he held her limp form against him, that very last time. 

He let the girl kiss him. 

And in doing that, just for a second, he let Betty leave. 

He let her be dead. 

It’s a mess of words, as he blubbers “no, no, please, no, I’m sorry, I’m  _ sorry _ , come back!” 

(She doesn’t. She won’t.)

* * *

His lungs rattle after that night. It was cold, he was wearing a wife beater. 

They offer him something warm to eat, but he turns them down. 

He lets himself cough. 

Any time that he is not fighting, he’s in the mountains. 

Sometimes there are spots in his vision now. He feels faint. He shivers easily, and coughs often.

The motorcycle wobbles when he can’t see straight. 

_ (I just want you to know, I love you.) _

* * *

But he hears her laugh, and when the breeze is warm, it feels like she’s sitting next to him. 

In the mountains, he smiles. It feels foreign, but he smiles, and sometimes he sleeps. 

  
  


He feels weak. Every part of him drags, or burns. Or it would, if he could feel it. He can feel himself slipping, but he doesn’t stop. 

Everything changed that day, and no matter what happens, he will never be far from the him that was left in a bloody trauma room, holding everything he believed in still against him. 

* * *

  
  


Something feels different when he fights, on what he’d hazard is a Tuesday. 

For one, he wins. It’s a small profit, but he shakes his opponent’s hand, shakes his boss’s hand, and something inside him knows that this is the last time he will. 

It’s not a feeling he can explain, but it’s a feeling he’s sure about, and that is unique. 

He’s won a small sum, which he uses for gas. 

He’s having trouble standing, and when he can, hacking coughs assail his body, but still, he packs his belongings tidily into his backpack, and swings a heavy, tired leg over his bike. 

The road blurs beneath him. Sometimes he hears a honk of an annoyed car, but it rolls off of him. 

_ (I’ll never stop loving you.) _

* * *

And when he slides into his spot (into  _ their _ spot), he feels his breathing pattern change. It’s slower, less regular.

But he hears something else, too. 

It’s not a laugh, it’s a voice. And it’s a smell. 

Strawberries. As clear as anything, he smells strawberries. 

And he hears a voice call his name, in a voice he couldn’t forget if he lived another hundred lifetimes. 

_ Juggie _ , it says.  _ Juggie, I’m here. _

And she is. 

He sees her. He would weep if he could, because he sees her, he  _ sees  _ her, smiling and beautiful. 

There’s no blood, no bruises, not for either of them. She slides into his arms, and she’s warm and soft and real, and he’s sure he’s not breathing. 

Maybe he doesn’t need to be, to see the world tinge in shades of rich blue, and bright green, and soft yellow around him. 

He doesn’t need to be to hear her laugh, or see her smile, or hold her in his arms as he feels the tether that ties them together, inside of him, reach out, and touch. 

_ (I’ll see you soon.)  _

* * *

"He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.'"

  * Alexandre Dumas, _The Count of Monte Cristo_



  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Oof. 
> 
> As usual, you are allowed to yell at me, here or on my tumblr at thatiranianphantom dot tumblr dot com.


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